This invention is directed to an apparatus for removing water off of a surface of a large surface area such as a race track, a runway or the like. The apparatus includes a rolling member which piles up a wave of water in front of it as it moves and a wave direction changing member which is capable of imparting a momentum to the wave, at least a portion of said momentum directed to one of the ends of the rolling member to cause the wave of water to be displaced toward the end of the rolling member.
The pooling or improper drainage of water on certain surface areas such as race tracks and airport runways can be hazardous because of the loss of traction between a vehicle's tires and the surfaces.
In certain sporting events such as baseball and football played on artificial turf, standing water also presents a problem. Machines have been invented which are capable of removing water from artificial turf. Examples can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,683,447; 3,351,971; 3,736,619; and 3,835,500. For other sporting events such as tennis and for factory floors and the like, a different class of water removal apparatus is known. Included in this class would be a machine known under the tradename of the "WATER BLOTTER" and the long handled rollers, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,339. In addition to these machines, a machine is also known for removing painted stripes from artificial turf. This machine is described in U.S. Pat. 4,069,540.
The machines used for water removal on artificial turf generally have a vacuum chamber associated with a roller. The roller squishes down on the turf to squeeze or displace water from the turf and this water is then removed from the turf by a large mechanical vacuum apparatus. Generally the water is stored in tanks which are periodically drained or as is described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,447 noted above, the water is blown to the side of the artificial surface through a nozzle under pressure. While these machines are useful for the artificial of athletic fields and the like, they are not practical to use on race tracks and runways. This is because of several reasons.
Race tracks and runways are of a much greater surface area and therefore the machines that rely on storage tanks to receive the "vacuumed up water" are limited to the capacity of the storage tank. Use of such a machine on a large surface area would require repetitive trips to a dumping sight to empty the storage tanks. Further these types of machines also require a vacuum system. The vacuum system has several inherent disadvantages. It requires a sizable power plant to generate the necessary vacuum power which thus requires expenditures of large amounts of fuel. Further, a pump or some other type of apparatus is necessary to achieve the vacuum. Any pump, turbine or the like is susceptible to exceedingly fast wear, if not catestrophic failure, by the presence of particles of sand, small rocks and the like which are normally found on the surface of race tracks, runways, etc. Additionally these devices generally need to first compress the artificial turf to squeeze the water from it so that it may be vacuumed up. This action, of course, is impossible on hard surfaces such as concrete, asphalt and the like.
Machines such as the water blotter and the long handled roller find certain utility on small surface areas such as tennis courts. The water blotter, like the above noted artificial turf machines, utilizes a storage tank so that the water picked up by its foam surface roller can be transferred to the tank for temporary storage. As noted, storage tanks are impractical for large surface areas and additionally rollers having foam-like surfaces are subject to extreme wear and thus short life when exposed to abrasive surfaces such as concretes, asphalts and the like. Roller-like devices such as that described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,339 require manual pushing and thus would be of little utility for any kind of large surface area.
Solid debris such as dirt, rocks and sand are easily moved over large surface areas through the use of mechanical devices having plows attached thereto. These plows are normally made of a ferrous metal to resist wear. Such a plow would not be useful for water removal, however, in that some type of seal must be made between the water removing machine and the surface area. This is, of course, impossible between a metal plow and a hard surface area which generally is not perfectly smooth, for example, an asphalt race track. It is conceivable that a plow, in effect a giant squeegee, could be formed of a rubber-like material. This would serve to form the necessary seal between the plow and the surface area without being detremental to the surface area itself, but such a squeegee-like plow would be of short life and therefore essentially useless. The friction in dragging such a large squeegee-like plow against a hard surface would very soon wear the rubber material off to a point where the squeegee-like plow would be useless.